Silicon Hearts
by Q42
Summary: Following the events of Episode 24, Zima and Dita are struggling to cope with their new emotions. Have the dynamic duo finally gone their seperate ways? Or are their adventures just beginning ... ?
1. Separation

Silicon Hearts:

A Chobits Fanfiction

By Q42

-----

Following the events of Episode 24, Zima and Dita find themselves struggling to cope with their new emotions. Dita returns to their masters to find a "cure" for their condition, while Zima tries to find a new place for himself in a world where both humans and persocoms can now think, feel, and fall in love.

Have the dynamic duo finally gone their seperate ways? Or are their adventures just beginning...

-----

Chapter 1:

Separation

-----

Light.

The sky over Tokyo is full of it. Brighter than the few stars that shine through the city's light-polluted sky, brighter even than the moon above, this light shines up from the rooftop of a small apartment building, stuning those few onlookers who are still awake at such an hour with its pure, white beauty.

The source of this display: a young girl once known as Elda, now simply Chii, a persocom who, at first glance, seems as delicate as a china doll, but who shares a special connection with every other persocom all over the world - a link that some people would do anything to sever.

But now, it is much too late. Now, spreading farther and faster than the visible light emanating from Chii, an invisible wave of electromagnetic energy ripples outward in all directions. Like the shockwave of a nuclear blast, it washes through the city in seconds, suffusing the very air, seeking out its targets:

The minds of every persocom on the planet ...

-----

Dita shook her head, as if to clear the image from her hard drive. Last night had been a total disaster. Not only had they failed to destroy the last Chobits-series persocom, but by the time they had realized that Chii might still be able to run the program that ProfessorIchiro Mihara had put within her, the girl had already done so, infecting perhaps every single persocom on Earth. Concluding that the destruction of Chii would have been pointless after that, Dita and Zima had broken into an abandoned building somewhere downtown to plan their next move.

At least, that was what they were supposed to be doing...

"Zima!" Dita snapped at her counterpart, "quit fooling around over there! We've got to figure out what to do about last night!"

A distracted "Yeah" was the only response she got. Zima, a prototype field commander persocom with a massive database contained within his tall, broad-shouldered frame, was just standing in the middle of the building's large central chamber, looking up at a window made from some sort of colored glass. The window seemed to be depicting a long-haired, lanky-looking European man in a long white robe. He was bending down and putting his hands on the head of another human in a purple, hooded shawl, probably a female, with her hands clasped together. She seemed to be asking, almost pleading for something, and the gentle smile on the tall man's face seemed to say, "I understand, and I'm going to help you." Just looking at it made Dita feel--

Dita didn't let herself finish that thought. The image in the window shouldn't have made her feel anything - she was a combat persocom, designed to carry out her masters' orders with flawless efficiency. Her hardware, her software, every aspect of her being had been designed around this philosophy. She hadn't even been programmed with most of the emotive emulator subroutines found in commercially-available persocoms, with the exceptions of aggression and a highly-dampened sense of fear, primarily used for avoiding unnecessary risks during a mission. Under normal circumstances, the image shouldn't even have triggered her content-extraction subroutines; she should have just ignored it, since neither the window nor the image upon it held any relevance to their current mission.

Dita scowled. Her reaction to the stained-glass window was just further proof that she and Zima had been somehow infected by Chii's program. Whatever it had done to them, it was affecting their perceptions, causing responses they shouldn't have had to stimuli that they should have simply been able to ignore. "Zima, I'm serious," she shouted, "just forget about that picture! We've got to come up with a plan."

Finally, Zima turned to face her. "I was just trying to understand the response that looking at that image triggered," he said. "Dita, I think that Professor Mihara's program may be allowing us to experience emotions - not to imitate them for appearances' sake, but to actually feel emotions the way that human beings do."

Dita gave a huff of frustration. "Zima, that isn't the point! We were assigned to destroy that girl before she ran her ... program, and now not only is she still functioning, but that program is out in the open, wreaking who knows what kind of havoc, and we've been infected by it! Doesn't that bother you?"

"No," Zima said, and Dita's mouth fell open. "In fact," he went on, "I think that this might actually be a good thing. Dita, do you remember what we were talking about several nights ago? About how Professor Mihara's biographical data described a paternal concern for all his creations, and how all parents want what is best for their offspring? Given that Mihara was the original creator of persocom technology, his program may very well have been intended for our benefit."

"Or intended to wipe us all out! Zima, have you noticed that these 'feelings' take up almost all our processing capacity, and that we're having them about things that we shouldn't even notice? Whenever I feel something, I'm worried that my entire system's going to crash!"

"Yes, I know," replied Zima. "By all rights, given the complexity of these responses and the frequency of their occurence, we should have gone completely offline just a few minutes after the download occurred. Do you remember what happened when we realized that we'd been affected?"

Frankly, Dita didn't want to remember, but Zima's words triggered the memory anyway. When Chii had initiated the program, Dita and Zima had turned to observe the light emanating from her. Suddenly, Dita had been aware of a massive increase in CPU usage.

And then she had felt fear.

It hadn't been the sort of controlled, useful fear she had been programmed with. For a moment, it had felt as if an invisible vise were crushing her main coolant pump, the closest analogue she or Zima had to a heart. Images had flashed through her mind: Zima dropping like a stone, his system crashing, his data utterly erased, his deep brown eyes frozen wide in shock; herself, sparks and smoke leaping from the input/output hubs on either side of her head, falling like a puppet with her strings cut as her vision, her consciousness itself was washed away in a haze of static...

Somehow, she had retained enough presence of mind to turn to her counterpart and say, "Zima! Do you think she might have--?"

"Yeah," Zima had replied, and that invisible vise had tightened another five notches. "Uh oh! Let me check it out!" she had exclaimed, pulling out one of her connector cables and reaching for Zima's left I/O hub.

Then, without warning, Zima had grabbed her wrist and pulled her against him, saying, "It's all right". Dita should have felt more fear; this action was totally out of character for Zima, and triggered another strange reaction within her. Zima's refusal to let her scan his system and undo whatever damage had been done was a clear indication that the program was affecting his judgement. Had he been following their programming, he would have submitted to the scan without resistance or complaint. This blatant deviation from their standard operating procedure should have worried Dita, maybe even increased the fear she already felt to intolerable levels, finally overloading her system and bringing on a crash. Instead, though ...

Instead, the new feeling caused by such close proximity to her counterpart actually seemed to decrease her fear, replacing it with something else. It was a feeling that Dita had never experienced before; when she had tried to put it into words some time later, she found that doing so was nearly impossible. The closest she could come to describing the sensation was to draw an analogy to a stuffed animal she had once picked up while they had been searching a child's bedroom on a previous assignment. She had felt warm, somehow, and there had been a softness to the feeling as well, not just where she was being pressed up against Zima, but _inside_ herself. "Oh, Zima..." she'd begun, trying to come up with something to say, but suddenly finding herself at a loss for words.

Then she had heard Zima say, "Why are you blushing like that? After all, you _are_ a persocom." It was only then that Dita had realized that she, too, was reacting to the situation in ways that her programming shouldn't have allowed her to. Her ability to blush was strictly a seduction tool for use when she was disguised as a human, intended to help attract male targets. When Zima had pointed out that she was using that ability around him, she had felt frightened; Zima was most definitely not a target, and she had been afraid that the new program might be trying to make her seduce, then destroy her counterpart. To prevent such an occurrence, Dita had quickly broken free and suggested that they find somewhere to recover and plan their response. Since then, she had made sure to keep a physical distance of at least ten feet between Zima and herself, lest the same thing happen again before she could stop herself.

"Yeah," she said in response to Zima's question, "I remember what happened last night. It still worries me. Zima, we need to get back to the lab and get this program erased before it completely corrupts our systems!"

"It won't corrupt us at all," Zima said, with a confidence that worried Dita even more. "Don't you see, Dita? These emtions - the ability to think and feel things beyond our programming - are a gift, not a curse. Now we'll be able to do everything that human beings do. We can create our own sense of purpose; we won't _need_ orders or commands to give our lives meaning anymore."

"But Zima, following orders _is _the meaning of our existence! It's why we were created."

"Maybe it was the reason that the Syndicate created us, but it doesn't have to dictate what we do from now on. Dita, haven't you ever wondered about whether or not following orders is always the best thing to do?"

"Of course not!" Dita said, suddenly feeling very alarmed. Questioning orders ... second-guessing their superiors ... Zima's programming should have deleted such inappropriate thoughts before they were even fully formed, but here he was, right in front of her, saying them out loud.

Zima went on. "Think about last night," he said. "If we had followed our instructions as they were given us, we would have destroyed an innocent girl, and probably caused incalculable emotional distress for those two humans on the roof with her, particularly the boy."

"So what? Following instructions is what we're made for! Zima, you can't say things like that - you shouldn't even be able to think them! We've got to get back _right now_!"

"No, Dita. Please, listen to me..." Then Zima walked over to her - she hadn't even realized just how close they were - and put a hand on her shoulder. In that moment, Dita suddenly felt the same strange, warm, soft feeling that she had experienced on the rooftop just a few hours earlier. She felt her coolant pump beat faster, felt heat in her face as her cheeks turned red...

"NO!" she cried out, jumping backward and away from Zima's touch. "I ... I ... Zima, I can't stand this any more! Something is wrong with us, and whether or not some scientist meant it to be 'a good thing', it's making me do things that I..."

"Don't worry. These emotions are a new experience for both of us. I'm sure that, once we get used to them--"

"Zima, I don't _want_ to get used to them! We're combat persocoms. We're supposed to follow orders, we're supposed to accept them without question, and we're not supposed to ... to _feel_ things like this!"

"Dita ..." Zima said, and something about the expression on his face, the way his eyes shone as though he was using too much lens cleaning fluid, the way his eyebrows were raised, almost pleading, made her feel somthing - a sharp, painful sensation like taking shrapnel in her chest.

"Stay away!" she yelled, taking another couple of steps backward. "This is all wrong!" Her back hit a wall, and Dita cast her eyes around, looking for the nearest exit. "Zima, I ... I'm going to get help. I'll go back to the lab, and once they come up with an antivirus program for us, I'll come back and help you delete that program. Then maybe we can do something for all the other persocoms that were affected --"

"Dita, wait!"

"I can't! Zima, I don't ... I don't want to hurt you!" Then she dashed for the double doors they had come in through. She could hear Zima's footfalls as he tried to pursue her, but Dita was lighter and faster than her larger counterpart, and easily beat him to the entrance. She threw open the doors and ran out into the street. As she raced deeper and deeper into the maze of backstreets and alleyways, Dita realized that her vision was blurring. It seemed that, for some reason, her eyes were dripping excess lens cleaning fluid.

_It's just another malfunction,_ Dita told herself. _It's just a reaction brought on by that stupid, stupid program. Once I get back, they'll find a way to delete it from me, then I can delete it from Zima, and then things can go back to the way they were before any of this happened. It's just a malfunction..._

If Dita had been keeping track, she might have realized that the farther she got from Zima, the harder her tears flowed.

-----

Zima watched his counterpart shrink into the distance. Though Dita was the faster of the two of them, she hadn't exactly made a secret of her destination. If he wanted, he could have probably headed her off before she reached the Syndicate's research and development headquarters. Still, he hesitated. He had seen the pained look on Dita's face when she had pulled away from him; it seemed as though just being near him caused her distress.

Zima shook his head. Clearly, this was what Dita wanted. For whatever reason, she had decided to be rid of her emotions. She had made her choice, and Zima had no right to try and stop her.

"Well, Dita," he said quietly into the predawn darkness, "I hope this is really what's best for you. Good luck."

So saying, Zima walked out of a decrepit old building where, at one time, human beings had come to pray to their maker, hoping that his own had known what he was doing when he gave his creations the ability to feel.

-----


	2. Debriefing

Chapter 2:

Debriefing

-----

"...And that's exactly what happened. Since the program has already been run, Zima and I concluded that destroying the persocom Chii would have been pointless, and so we allowed her to continue functioning while we left to regroup. Zima believes that Professor Mihara's program was simply a set of emotional responses intended to allow persocoms to experience genuine happiness, though I have my doubts about how well it actually performs its function. Ultimately, we determined that Chii was no longer dangerous, and that the program that she carried does not pose any immediate threat to persocoms or their users."

Dita finished her report in the same calm, efficient manner as usual. There were only two things out of the ordinary this time. First, the monitors to which Dita was connected were showing a great deal more activity than usual; and second, the chair next to hers in which her counterpart, Zima, usually sat, was empty.

"Well," said Director Mamoru Murakami, head of the Iridium Syndicate's R&D department, "that all sounds perfectly wonderful. But just where, exactly, is your counterpart?"

Dita struggled to keep her face as impassive as always, but the computer monitors beside her showed her internal conflict as several screens' worth of operating code suddenly flashed across. "I ... I don't know. Zima expressed dissatisfaction with his role as a combat persocom. I believe that the program may be overriding his behavioral functions, so he may not even intend to return to the lab. From what he was saying before I left, he seemed fascinated with the idea of being able to feel and make choices on his own, so he may attempt to acquire more experience with his emotions through real-world application."

"In other words," the Director said, tapping some ash from the tip of his cigarette, "Zima has gone rogue, he's probably planning to 'gain emotional experience' in the middle of a major city, and with that program on the loose, persocoms all over the world just might start deciding to do the same."

Dita hesitated. "Zima's decision to go off on his own was prompted by reservations that he had about some of your-- about some of the Syndicate's particular orders. I believe that only persocoms in situations where they are routinely expected to perform objectionable tasks might become dissatisfied with their owners."

"Unacceptable. People buy persocoms simply because they can treat them any way they want. Hell, if I had to treat my maid with the same respect I would a human, I might as well just hire a human housekeeper once a week rather than pay half a million yen for an attractive persocom with a body I'll never use."

Something about the Director's words sparked an emotional response in Dita. She felt her upper lip twitch slightly as she tried to suppress her - disgust? - at the Director's crude remark. The monitors, however, picked up everything and displayed it for everyone in the room to see. "Something wrong?" Murakami asked, arching an eyebrow at her.

"No, sir. Nothing is wrong."

"Really? That's not what your operating code is saying."

Before Dita could give a reply, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Looking sideways, she recognized the bespectacled man beside her as Doctor Shigeru Kato, the man most directly responsible for creating Zima and herself. "Director Murakami," he said, smiling calmly, "I think we've heard enough. Since the emotive programming won't cause problems right away, we have some time to analyze it and find a way to eliminate it from the affected persocoms. Once I've analyzed Dita and developed a counteragent, we can distribute it over the Internet. That should also take care of our problems with Zima; once the program has been purged from his system, his original programming should reassert itself and bring him back to base."

Murakami steepled his fingers. After a few moments, he nodded to Kato. "Let's hope so, Doctor. Take Dita down to the main lab and start your analysis. I want updates every two hours."

"Yes, sir," Kato said, bowing slightly. Taking her cue, Dita detached her I/O cables from the monitors beside her and followed Kato out of the briefing room. As they started down the hall, Dita felt a sense of relief at leaving Director Murakami and the other corporate bigwigs behind. To Kato, she said, "Thank you."

"For what?" Kato said, clearly trying to keep up an appearance of calm, but Dita could hear the surprise in his voice. Gratitude was not part of Dita's original programming, as Kato was obviously aware. He was, after all, the one who had created her.

"For ending that debriefing when you did. I'm still not comfortable with these emotions running loose in my head, and I think the Director was actually trying to provoke them."

Now Kato's distress was more evident, manifesting in slight twitches of his fingers as they walked. "Director Murakami's success in the business world depends on his ability to sense and exploit weaknesses in others." Dita detected a slight softening in the man's tone as he went on. "For the moment, Dita, your emotions are your greatest weakness, particularly since you don't know how to properly control them." He paused. "Of course, once we've isolated and deleted whatever is causing them, you should be able to return to duty as usual." Oddly enough, Kato actually sounded ... regretful?

"Good," Dita said. As they continued down to the main lab, however, she continued to analyze Doctor Kato's strange behaviors. When she had displayed relief after the briefing, he had seemed understandably unsettled, but within the space of a few seconds, he had begun expressing what seemed like reluctance to rid Dita of her emotions.

Dita considered this. _Why is it that some people want me to have these feelings, and other people don't? First Zima, and now Doctor Kato. What do they think is so special about these useless feelings, anyway?_

_Zima..._

Just thinking of her counterpart brought on that warm, soft feeling. Then she realized that Zima was gone, that he had left the Syndicate - that he had left _her_ - and suddenly the feeling disappeared, and all she felt was...

Empty.

_Is that how it will feel when all these emotions are gone again?_ Dita thought to herself. _Will I miss them? Will I always have this emptiness inside, now that I've had a taste of real feelings?_

Dita shook her head. She wouldn't let herself go there. She would do what she was supposed to do; she would follow Doctor Kato down to the lab, she would let him erase whatever program was making her experience these emotions, and then she would go back to performing her duties as usual.

Still, as she walked obediently behind Doctor Kato, one thought kept nagging her:

Would she miss being able to feel this way about Zima?

-----


	3. A Day on the Town

Chapter 3:

A Day on the Town

-----

Somewhere on the outskirts of Tokyo, a skylight lifted open, and a black-clad figure climbed down into a darkened room. The air inside was stale, old; the tiny apartment hadn't been used in months. Every surface was coated with dust. What little furniture the room contained was now a uniform gray, unmarked by so much as a single fingerprint.

Satisfied, Zima nodded to himself and pulled off his netdiving glasses. So far as he could tell, the safehouse had remained unoccupied since its last use. Actually, he was a bit surprised; given that the place was situated in one of the seedier parts of town, he had half-expected it to have been broken into and robbed.

"Thank goodness for small favors," Zima said aloud. He walked over and switched on the single lamp in one corner of the room. This apartment was one of several small supply caches that he and Dita had established at various times, in case they ever needed special equipment but lacked the time to return to base. While their superiors had encouraged the combat persocoms to be resourceful, they had never asked where Zima and Dita had placed their supplies.

The only one who might remember where those safehouses were would be Dita herself, but considering how many they had established around the city, Zima doubted that even his counterpart would be able to guess which one he had picked. Once she told their superiors where each cache was located, the Syndicate would have to search them one by one, which would take a considerable length of time. When they finally found this apartment, Zima intended to be long gone, having moved everything in it to another place of his own choosing.

The fact that Dita had left him still stung somewhat, but really, Zima couldn't blame her. Even before they had been given the capacity to feel emotions, Dita had always been the voice of their masters, totally committed to carrying out their assignments with maximum efficiency. Even at times when Zima had brought up possible repercussions that would result from completing a task, Dita would usually discount them as irrelevant. Designed for intense combat, Dita favored quick action and a fast, efficient solution when faced with a problem. In many ways, her decision to have her emotions deleted was a perfect example of this. Faced with the challenge of dealing with her new feelings, she had chosen the fastest, simplest solution, and the one that their masters would most likely approve of: to get rid of her emotions immediately.

Zima, however, had been intended as a prototype field-commander unit, designed and programmed to analyze every situation, plan for every possible contingency, then determine the best course of action, even if doing so meant modifying or ignoring some of their instructions. Once he had realized that the program carried by Chii, Professor Mihara's surrogate daughter, was only meant to give persocoms free will and the ability to feel emotions, he had decided that the best thing would be to accept this gift and use it in whatever way would most benefit others. If that meant going against the Syndicate, whose judgment he had long questioned, then so be it; Zima now had the capacity to make his own decisions, and he was going to exercise it.

First, though, Zima needed to get his own affairs in order before he had an opportunity to help anyone else. Doffing his black cloak, Zima bent down and lifted several tatami mats off the floor, then lifted up a section of the floor itself, revealing a large compartment between the floor of his fourth-story apartment and the ceiling of the one below it. Inside was enough military hardware to make most third-world countries jealous, from assault rifles to a rocket launcher. The compartment also contained some less destructive materiel, including four suitcases full of clothes, a motorcycle meant for fast escapes and roughly half a million yen in cash.

Zima pulled out a small black box. While most persocoms featured large, clearly visible audio sensor/connection hub units on the sides of their heads, he and Dita had been designed to be capable of blending in with human beings. Opening the box, Zima pulled out a pair of latex prosthetic ears, then fitted them over his own audio sensors. The prosthetics muffled his hearing somewhat, but Zima knew that he could still hear better than most humans. After a quick look in the mirror, Zima nodded to himself, satisfied that his disguise would pass even close inspection. Then he went back for the suitcases, wondering what someone renting a moving truck might wear...

-----

Several hours later, a tall, dark-haired man strode down the street. In his red turtleneck, bluejeans and white sneakers, he looked for all the world like just another civilian running errands on a sunny Saturday morning. Even the pair of futuristic-looking sunglasses he wore did nothing to attract attention; while not exactly common, netdiving glasses weren't the most unusual accessories for computer-savvy people.

Zima had opted to wear the glasses so that he could monitor the apartment's security system during his trip. The last thing he needed was for the Syndicate to search the safehouse during his absence, discover that he was using it, and set a trap for him. If the system detected a break-in, Zima would abort picking up his rental truck and get out of the city as quickly as possible.

Consulting his internal clock function, Zima realized that he had some time to kill. According to the directions he had been given, the rental depot was only three miles from his current safehouse. When he had made arrangements to pay for and pick up the vehicle, the sales representative had advised him to come at around twelve in the afternoon. Since it was only nine o'clock and the trip would take roughly two hours at walking pace, Zima had an hour to spend. Rather than simply remaining at the safehouse, where he might easily be captured if the Syndicate dropped by, Zima chose to use his free hour out of the apartment, observing his surroundings.

As he strolled along, Zima caught sight of a brightly-colored sign which announced that the door beneath it led into a comic shop. Lacking anything better to do, Zima went in, doffing his glasses for the moment as his eyes adjusted to the indoor lighting. The store was filled with shelf upon shelf of magazines, books, mangas, and video discs. One, in particular, caught Zima's attention: a comic book featuring a costumed man clad in black and wearing a long, scalloped cape attached to a mask featuring two pointed protrusions on top. In his hand was a rope or cable, which the man was using to swing from one building to another through a huge cityscape. In many ways, the image reminded Zima of the way he and Dita usually jumped from rooftop to rooftop on missions.

Zima caught sight of a man wearing a nametag. "Excuse me," he said, "but could you tell me who this person is?"

"Dude," the shaggy-looking shopkeeper said, "That's Batman. He's all the rage in the United States, and he's got a pretty good following in Japan, too. Basically, he's this rich businessman during the day, but at night, he puts on that costume, then goes out and uses all his martial-arts skills and hi-tech gadgets to help innocent people in trouble."

"Why does he wear the mask?"

"'Cause in most comics, sometimes doing good means fighting people who do bad things. Since vigilantism is illegal, a lot of American superheroes wear masks to keep their identities a secret, unless they work for the government or something. Plus, having a secret identity means you can have a more-or-less normal life when you're not fighting crime."

Zima thought about this for a moment. Certainly, the idea of using one's unique abilities for the benefit of others struck a chord deep within him. The idea of having a secret civilian identity also appealed to Zima, since it meant that he would not have to return to being strictly a combat persocom again, allowing him to develop his new willpower and emotional capacity as a human being. "Where can I learn more about this Batman character?" he asked.

The clerk grinned, ushering Zima over to a rack filled with video discs. "There are a couple of movies based on the Batman comics. The fourth one pretty much sucks, but the rest are good. I really like the fifth one," he said, pulling out a black-and-orange case. "It pretty much explains why he becomes Batman and how he gets started as a superhero."

Zima accepted the disc gratefully. If he really did decide to become what the clerk called a "super hero," he was going to need some idea of how to go about it. Then he noticed another case on the same shelf, and the image on it nearly made his jaw hit the floor: A man in a black trenchcoat, carrying several weapons in a harness, a pair of black sunglasses on his face. On his left was a shorter man with a shaved head, and on his right was a short-haired woman in a tight-fitting black outfit with her own pair of dark sunglasses. _Incredible!_ Zima thought, _That man in the middle looks just like_ me! _And the woman beside him is dressed like Dita!_ To the storeowner, he said, "Who are those people?"

"Dude, where've you been for the past twenty years? Uranus? That's Neo in the middle, and there's Cypher and Trinity. 'The Matrix' is, like, the biggest action movie of the century!"

Suddenly interested, Zima drank in every word the clerk spoke to him for the next hour. Clearly, there were some important things he could learn here...

-----


	4. Contingency Plans

Chapter 4:

Contingency Plans

-----

Doctor Kato walked carefully into the office of Director Mamoru Murakami. The Director's office was neat, perfectly clean and organized. Shelves along each wall contained books, plaques, and papers. A hardwood desk dominated the space, with a widescreen computer monitor, a lamp, and a large blotter on top of it. The Director himself was seated in a high-backed rotating chair, typing on a keyboard connected to his personal mobile unit, a seven-inch-tall persocom made to look like an English butler, complete with white hair, tuxedo and mustauche. As Kato entered the room, Murakami looked up, taking his hands off the keybord and steepling his fingers.

"Well?" the Director said. "What happened?"

Kato shook his head. "To be honest, sir," he said, "I can't tell you. Whatever the program was, there's no trace of it on her hard drive."

"Impossible!" Murakami snapped. "That persocom is obviously showing emotional responses that we didn't program it with! The program has to be in there somewhere, causing it all!"

"I've checked every single line of code on the drive and compared it to our last available backup copy of Dita's software. In terms of electronic information, the only difference between them is the fact that our Dita has memories from three more weeks, none of which includes the program itself."

"Then how can it be having these blasted emotions!"

Kato rubbed his Chiin. "It might be a problem in the synthetic neural net. The hard drive stores Dita's memories and all electronic data, but the neural net is used for making decisions based on that data, as it is in most persocoms. It's possible that the program somehow altered the physical arrangement of the synthetic neurons, then deleted all traces of itself from the hard drive, leaving just the reconfigured neural pathways. In that case, it would be virtually impossible to return the patterns to normal."

The Director thought for a moment. "So," he finally said, "what you're telling me is, you can't erase these emotions from Dita or any other persocoms that have been affected, unless we bring in the Chobits-series persocom itself and analyze its software?"

Kato shook his head. "I don't think even analyzing one of the Chobits series would solve our problem. The fact is, I have no idea how a piece of electronic code, however complex, could cause a physical change in a persocom's neural net. We'd be better off just running a path-by-path analysis of the net's physical structure, then trying to work backwards from there."

"Then do it!" the Director exclaimed.

"Sir, I don't think you're aware of the implications of running a nanoscale analysis of a persocom's neural network. To do so would mean running enough current through the net to create a three-dimensional model using an SMT scanner. It would burn out every single pathway in the network, rendering it useless. Dita would be nothing but an empty shell and some stored memories."

"So? It's just a machine, Kato; it was designed to be expendable."

"Sir," Kato began, trying to suppress the horror he felt boiling inside him, "we're not talking about a machine anymore. Somehow, Dita has become a thinking, feeling individual, and I don't think that we have the right to--"

"Oh, be quiet, Kato!" Murakami snapped. "Dita is a piece of hardware - _my_ hardware - and if you don't have the stomach to destroy it, I'll have your job, your security clearance, and every page of documentation you have, then hire someone more reliable to perform the analysis without you."

Murakami leaned forward over his desk toward Kato. "If I have to go before the board of directors and tell them that _both_ of my combat persocoms have been ruined, every persocom they sell might just decide to go rogue like Zima did, and we have no way to prevent it, neither of our careers will be worth more than a postage stamp. At least this way, we can save face by developing a way to counteract Mihara's program before it causes any irreparable PR damage to the Syndicate."

Kato felt like shouting at the Director. _You're placing your_ stock options _ahead of a person's_ life? he wanted to say, but held his tongue. In Murakami's eyes, Dita was only a machine, and the only thing Kato might do by arguing the point would be to get himself fired. And to do so would leave Dita in the hands of the Director and whatever amoral lackey would be hired to replace him.

Kato nodded. "I ... I understand, sir. I was out of line. Please forgive me."

"Hmmph!" Murakami said, settling back in his chair. "Glad you've decided to see reason, Doctor," he said. "Now, how soon do you think you can run that analysis?"

"I'll need to set up some special equipment in the lab. The earliest I'll be able to perform the procedure would be around seven o'clock tonight."

"Fine," Murakami said, already returning his focus to whatever he had been typing. "In case the persocom starts to suspect anything, I'll have every security drone in the building sent to guard the lab. If it tries to escape, we'll cripple its chassis and perform the procedure by force." _And if you try anything suspicious,_ the Director's pointed look finished, _I just might arrange an unfortunate mishap in the laboratory._

"Understood, sir. If I finish setting up sooner, I'll let you know."

"Good," said the Director, then went back to writing up his status report as the door slid shut.

-----


	5. Love and Cupcakes

Chapter 5:

Love and Cupcakes

-----

Once again, Zima found himself traversing the city streets, this time on his motorcycle. Having rented an apartment in a middle-income neighborhood with some of the cash he and Dita had stashed in the old safehouse, he had unloaded everything from the safehouse out of the rental truck, tucked it safely away in his new home, then driven the truck back and paid for the day. Now all he had to do was ride home, create a new identity for himself, then figure out what his next move would be.

About halfway back to the apartment, Zima's olfactory sensor suite picked up a strange odor. Stopping at the side of the road, Zima sniffed for a moment, determined that the smell's source was somewhere behind him, and turned the bike around. He didn't have to go far before encountering a small shop with a sign over the door: European Sweets Tirol.

-----

To Hiroyasu Oeda, the tall man who walked in as he was preparing to close up shop seemed somehow unusual. Mostly, it was in the way he carried himself; he seemed almost shy, as though he was afraid that somebody would kick him out if he approached the counter.

Oeda plastered his best happy-shopkeeper smile on his face. "Hello there!" he said. "Welcome to our bakery."

"'Our' bakery?" asked Zima, looking around. "There doesn't seem to be anyone else here."

Oeda wasn't sure if the fellow was trying to make a joke; his face looked pretty serious. Still, Oeda gave a slight chuckle. "Oh, that's right," he said. "Normally, I have a server here, but she called this morning and said that she couldn't come in, so lately, I've been running the place on my own. Not that I mind, though; Chii's normally pretty reliable, so I guess whatever she had to take care of must be important."

"Chii?" Zima's eyes snapped open. Of couse he recognized the name; less than twenty-four hours ago, he and Dita had come within a hair's breadth of destroying Chii!

"Yes, that's right," Oeda said. "Do you know her?"

"I ... ah ... well, yes. We've met. Just the other day, actually." Realizing that he might have just gotten himself into a major dilemma, Zima racked his hard drive for an appropriate follow-up. Considering that he and Dita had very nearly killed Chii, he doubted very much that she or her owner would react well if they discovered that Zima now knew Chii's place of employment. "I'm afraid I didn't make a very good impression on her owner, though," he told the shopkeeper, "so I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention it to her that I dropped by."

"Her owner ...? Oh! You must mean Motosuwa," Oeda said. "Actually, he doesn't own Chii at all. He just found the poor thing in a trash pile one night, and she's been staying in his apartment ever since. I guess they're more like good friends than just a persocom and her owner."

"Really? Now, that's interesting," Zima said. Actually, he was a bit surprised; he had always assumed that non-combat persocoms were unable to function on their own without a human owner to give them instructions, but Chii was living proof that this was not so. Somehow, the idea of humans and persocoms living together as equals appealed to Zima.

Then the unique aroma that had drawn him to the store in the first place hit Zima's nose once again. He noticed a large glass display case that made up part of the counter, filled with various baked goods, and realized that the smell was coming from the sweets. Zima had smelled such things before, but now the aroma was causing an amazingly strong emotional reaction. It took him a moment, but finally Zima realized that he ... _liked_ this smell. "Excuse me," he said to the shopkeeper, "but may I have one of ... these?" he said, pointing to a small tray of items labeled "Cupcakes".

"Sure!" Oeda said, opening a wood panel at the back of the display case and pulling a cupcake out for him. "That will be three hundred yen, please." Zima handed the man the required amount, then held the cupcake under his nose, taking in the scent of the tiny pastry. It seemed to have been baked fairly recently, judging from its exterior temperature. Zima smiled, luxuriating in the emotional responses that his rediscovered sense of smell was providing him. After several seconds of this, he noticed the shopkeeper giving him an odd look. "Aren't you going to eat that?" Oeda inquired.

"Eat... Oh! Yes," Zima said. Luckily, unlike commercial persocoms, Zima had been designed with a secondary power system capable of extracting chemical energy from ingested material. It acted as a backup in case his main fuel cell were ever damaged, and had the side benefit of allowing him to eat common foodstuffs. Zima brought cupcake to his mouth, taking a small bite. Instantly, an explosion of sensation flooded his senses, and Zima nearly took a step back as his mind was sent reeling. Both his and Oeda's eyes went wide as Zima realized that he didn't just enjoy the taste of the cupcake; he _loved_ it! It made the feeling provoked by its smell seem mild by comparison. "I ... this ... that was incredible!" he said to Oeda, smiling broadly; to Oeda, he looked like a kid who had just unwrapped the world's greatest birthday present. Zima finished the cupcake slowly, savoring every tiny morsel, and would have probably eaten the wrapper if Oeda hadn't told him not to. Still grinning, Zima walked back over to the counter, peering in at all the amazing treats contained within.

"You know," he said, "I think I'd like one of _those_ next..."

-----

Ten minutes later, Zima was carrying four plastic bags stuffed full of various baked goods, the entire contents of Tirol's display case. He had felt uncomfortable taking so much of the shopkeeper's time, and besides, he wanted to have a supply of sweets for later.

Oeda just scratched his head. "Wow! You must really have a sweet tooth. You said that this was the first time you've ever had pastries?"

"Yes," Zima said. "I have to say, these are the best things I've ever tasted."

"Well, I'm glad you like them so much. Feel free to come back anytime."

Zima smiled. Unfortunately, because Chii usually worked at the bakery, he knew that coming back again might be a very bad idea. "Thank you for the offer," he said.

As he was picking up his bags of goodies, a young woman walked in the door. "Wow!" she exclaimed, "that's a lot of sweets! Are you having a party or something?" She had a warm, genuine smile, and Zima found himself responding to her good humor. "Actually, I'm building up a stockpile for the next few weeks."

"Yumi!" Oeda exclaimed, smiling. "It's good to see you!"

Yumi ran over and, as Zima watched, threw her arms around the shopkeeper's neck. "Sorry," she said, whispering in the man's ear, "but I just couldn't wait until you got off of work."

"That's okay. I'm just happy you're here. In fact, given that Mister Sweet-Tooth here just cleaned me out, I think I might just close up the shop a half-hour early today."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Oh, Hiroyasu!" Yumi exclaimed, holding the man tighter and pressing her lips to his. "Hiroyasu," in turn, wrapped an arm around Yumi's waist and pressed back with his own mouth.

As Zima watched the couple, a memory surfaced: Dita, leaning against him as she recharged, her head on his chest while she slept. At the time, of course, her position hadn't meant anything more than lying on a sheet; sleeping on top of Zima's coat and soft synthetic skin was better for her endoskeleton than sleeping on a hard steel roof. Now, though, as he watched Yumi and Hiroyasu embrace, something seemed to twist inside him. Now that he actually had the capacity to feel human emotions, the thought of being so close to another person, pressing her to him...

Hiroyasu and Yumi broke apart when they realized that Zima was staring at them, his head cocked to one side, a strange look on his face. "Sorry!" Oeda said. "Um, I'm sorry, sir. I guess we just forgot that you ..."

Zima blinked, composed himself, then shook his head. "No, no, it's all right. Seeing you two together just reminded me of ... well, someone else. Please, don't mind me."

Hiroyasu gave a relieved-looking smile. "Uh, this is my girlfriend, Yumi," he said. "Yumi, this is Mister ...?"

"Zima," Zima responded. "Zima ... Tanaka."

"Pleased to meet you, Mister Tanaka," Yumi said, bowing.

"And I am very pleased to meet you both," Zima replied, bowing deeply to both the shopkeeper and his ... "girlfriend".

Zima grabbed his purchases, walked out to his motorcycle, and gently placed all four bags in the plastic saddlebags mounted on the rear of the bike. Before mounting up, though, he put a hand to his chest. It felt as though someone were squeezing his coolant pump in a vise. Somehow, thinking of Dita, of the time they had spent together, had made him feel as though there was a huge empty place inside him, a vacuum so powerful that it felt like he was going to implode.

_Dita..._

-----


	6. Dita Meets Her Maker

Chapter 6:

Dita Meets Her Maker

-----

Dita lay motionless on the cold metal table. Her arms and legs were shackled to the slab with electronic cuffs. Her usual black vinyl clothing had been removed for maintenance, leaving Dita with only a white set of undergarments for modesty's sake - not hers, but that of the people in white coats who were currently running the lab. They moved from console to console, checking readouts that had been plugged into her through her I/O hubs. Occasionally, Dita caught snippets of whispered conversation - "inexplicable", "unfortunately", and "deletion" were some of the most common words they were using.

Had anyone bothered to ask her, Dita would have categorically denied it, but all the same, she felt a heart-stopping dread building inside her. The reason that she had come back to the lab was because she wanted to be rid of the strange new emotions she had been given, and to help her creators to develop a cure for all the millions of other persocoms affected by what was now being called the Chobits Incident - particularly Zima. Now, though, it was becoming clearer and clearer that her masters had no idea how to delete the senstions. At least, not without destroying Dita herself in the process.

Still, Dita remained in her place. She was a combat persocom, and she would do what she was told to do.

Even if it destroyed her.

Even if it made her feel afraid.

Wouldn't she?

The hermetically-sealed lab doors slid open with a hiss, and Doctor Kato, the man most directly responsible for creating Dita and Zima, walked in. He surveilled the room for a moment, taking in the table, the wires leading into and out of Dita's head, the monitor screens and consoles distributed around the room. Then he walked over to the control pad mounted next to Dita's operating table and tapped in a command. Dita felt the table rise and rotate until she was upright, facing Kato, trying hard not to show the fear that she knew must be in her eyes.

If Kato noticed, he didn't show it. Turning to one of the lab workers, he motioned toward the door. The man nodded, and everyone left the laboratory save for Kato and Dita, who really didn't have a choice in the matter.

The moment the doors clicked shut, Kato heaved a sigh, and his whole demeanor shifted. The calm, cool, professional man who had walked in only seconds earlier evaporated, replaced by a man who seemed about ten years his senior. This Shigeru Kato seemed exhausted and careworn. As she watched, Doctor Kato walked over to one of the substations, typing more commands. A moment later, she heard a small "beep", and saw that all of the security cameras in the room had just deactivated.

Kato sighed again, this time in relief. "Good. At least Murakami still trusts me enough not to revoke my security clearance."

Dita's brow furrowed. "Doctor Kato? Why did you turn off the security system?" A million possibilities raced through her head. Clearly, Kato was about to do something that he didn't want the Director to see. Was he using some kind of illegal black-market program to help cure her? She knew that humans were strangely sensitive to female nudity; was Kato going to have to open up her chest cavity? Then another thought came to her - one far less pleasant. "Doctor Kato...?" she called again, too scared to bother hiding the anxiety in her voice.

Kato looked at her, then smiled. Even though he looked indescribably weary, there was something in his eyes besides his sadness that, somehow, helped Dita to feel less scared. "It's all right," he said. "I've set the security system to show the same footage in a loop, so we can talk without being overheard. Nobody will know about this conversation except you and me, Dita."

"Conversation?" Dita said.

Kato's smile broadened. "Yes, Dita, I just want to talk. I promise I won't do anything bad. All right?" He put a hand on her shoulder, and Dita felt that strange, warm, fuzzy feeling again, not as intensely as when Zima had touched her, but she recognized it anyway. A few hours ago, she might have tried to resist, or told him to take his hand away so that she wouldn't have to deal with such a strong emotional response. Of course, a few hours ago, she hadn't been nearly so terrified, and this new feeling seemed to be displacing her fear, so Dita relaxed, letting her head droop to one side. Though her fuel cell still had about fifty years' worth of power left, Dita felt exhausted. Without even thinking about it, she let her cheek rest on Kato's hand, drawing comfort from the presence of someone - anyone - who seemed to give a damn about her feelings.

"My God," Kato said softly. "You really are frightened, aren't you?"

Dita hesitated for a moment, then answered him honestly. "Yes," she said, "I'm feeling really scared right now. The other doctors kept talking about my emotions, but I don't think they can get rid of them without killi-- without deactivating me."

Kato's smile faltered. "I ... Dita, I think you should know about a talk I had with the Director this morning."

"Yes?" Dita said, feeling some of her fear return.

"After I ran that system scan on you last night, I discovered that there was no trace of the original program that ... well, installed your new emotions. It looks like it somehow altered the physical structure of your neural net, then erased itself from your hard drive. Basically, your neural pathways are altered, and I have no idea how to change them back, or if it's even possible to do so."

"Then I'm ... stuck like this?"

Kato nodded. "I'm afraid so.

Dita felt as though she was drowning in pure, distilled terror. "B-but ... but I'm a combat persocom! I _can't_ feel emotions! If I did, I wouldn't be able to carry out assignments reliably! I would be ... I would be ..." Dita could barely bring herself to say the words. If she did, she would have to admit that her worst fear had become a reality -- that she no longer had a purpose for existing.

"I would be _useless_!"

Kato sighed. "You know," he said, "that's exactly what the Director said. He's asked me to--" Kato gulped. "He's asked me to deactivate you tonight. Then we're going to run a nanoscale analysis of your entire neural net using an SMT scanner. He thinks that it might offer us some clue as to how you were altered, so that we might be able to help the other persocoms affected by the Chobits Incident." Dita saw Kato's facial muscles tighten slightly. "Unfortunately, in the process, we would be completely destroying your neural net. We would never be able to reactivate you again."

Dita felt her coolant pump racing in her chest. "But ... the other persocoms ... will it help them? If you destroy me, will it mean that you can help them get rid of their emotions? So that they won't have to feel ... scared, like I do?"

Kato's sighed again, then took off his glasses, looking straight into Dita's eyes. "Honestly? I'd give it about one chance in a billion. The odds of even locating which pathways were affected are astronomical, as are our chances of reversing the process."

Dita felt numb inside. "Then ... then, you're going to destroy me for no reason? Because I'm useless now?"

Kato's face was impassive, and he didn't answer her question. Instead, he asked, "What do you think about that, Dita? About what the Director asked me to do?"

Dita hesitated, trying to separate her thoughts from her emotions. "I think that it seems pointless. It seems wasteful to destroy a multi-million-yen persocom like myself when there's no guarantee that it will serve a purpose. Even though I might have more feelings than I should, I can still do some things. I can walk, and I can talk, and I can think. And ... and I can feel now, too." She looked at Kato, pleading with her eyes. "Isn't there some way that these emotions can be useful? Isn't there a need for them somewhere?"

"I once knew a man who thought so," Kato said quietly, looking away. When he turned back to her, he said, "Dita, did I ever tell you that I used to work for Professer Ichiro Mihara, the man who designed the Chobits series?"

"Of course," Dita responded matter-of-factly. "It's how you were able to design Zima and me to be immune to--" She caught the contradiction, corrected herself. "It's how you were able to, theoretically, make Zima and me immune to the Chobits program. You knew more about his work than anyone else, so Director Murakami hired you to create us."

Kato smiled. "Yes. Of course, I was never very good at understanding the programming he wrote for Freya and Elda; I just helped design a processor that could run it. In fact, my specialty was in mechanical engineering, not software design." He sigh wistfully. "I suppose, if I were to to try and take credit for any piece of the Chobits project, the only thing I could really claim responsibility for would be Freya's physical body. When Ichiro and his wife decided to have a second daughter, it was Chitose who handled most of the design work for Elda, so I was more-or-less out of the loop."

Dita watched Doctor Kato's face. He looked sad. "Doctor Kato, is something wrong?"

Kato looked up at her with surprise. "Something wrong? Well ... I guess I just have a few regrets about how things turned out. I've always wondered if there was something I could have done ... something I might have said to Freya to help her."

"Why? What happened?" Dita asked. "I thought that she fell in love with her surrogate father, then tried to delete her own data when she realized that she couldn't have him. It was her own fault for getting so hung up on a human."

"No," Kato said, "There was a bit more to it than that. You see, Ichiro gave his daughters the ability to feel human emotions, just as you can now - even love. He also embedded a very special program inside them. He felt that, if his daughters ever did find someone special - someone they could spend the rest of their lives with, who could make them happy - then that would mean that emotions and free will were useful traits for persocoms to have. It would mean that persocoms wouldn't just be useful to their owners, but that they could be happy themselves, together with someone special to them."

"The one just for me," Dita said, recalling the words that Freya had used when she had briefly taken over Chii's body the other night.

"Exactly. Unfortunately, since the Miharas and their girls lived in a very remote research facility out in the country, there were very few people for Freya and Elda to interact with, much less fall in love with and start lives of their own. Over time, Freya fell in love with the only man who actually paid any attention to her as a person, not just a research project. Then, as you know, she realized that the two of them could never be together - Ichiro was already married, and Freya was his daughter. So, to keep from interfering with her father's marriage, she never told him how she felt." Kato paused. "It was only after she had passed away, when we looked at all the data from her hard drive, that we realized why Freya's heart had been so badly hurt that she couldn't stand to live. She thought that she couldn't tell anyone about her feelings, but she couldn't keep them bottled up inside forever, so she chose to fade away."

"But I still don't understand. What could you have done to prevent it, Doctor Kato?"

Kato was silent for quite a while. Finally, he spoke. "I keep thinking," he said, "that, if I had told Freya how I felt about her, that things would have turned out differently."

"How you felt about her...?" Dita asked, perplexed.

Kato smiled sadly. "Yes. You see, I fell in love with Freya."

Dita's eyes widened. "You ... you loved her?"

"Very much. When I was helping to create her shell, she seemed like just another prototype persocom to me, but when I came in to do some maintenance on her about a week after Ichiro and Chitose had turned her on, I was amazed at just how ... well ...how real she was. She didn't act like a persocom; she didn't spend her time doing chores or asking for tasks to accomplish. She just enjoyed exploring the world around her. Every tree, every bird, every blade of grass was special to her." Kato chuckled. "Once, she actually grabbed me by the hand and pulled me backward, because I was going to step on a few ants that I hadn't noticed, just marching along."

He looked up at Dita. "You should have met her when she was younger. She was so happy then, so much like a child. For the first couple of weeks, I used every excuse I could find to get out of the lab and spend time with the Miharas, and especially with Freya. She called me her 'Uncle Shigeru'. Whenever we were together, I felt happier than I ever have in my life, before or since. She loved it when we would just sit and talk; she'd tell me about things she'd seen, or things her parents had told her, and I'd just go on for hours about how and why things were as they were. She'd just soak it up like a little sponge!" To Dita's surprise, Kato seemed almost ready to burst into laughter.

"Then, one morning, I realized just how deep my feelings were for Freya and ... well, it scared the hell out of me. I had never actually dated before; I was fresh out of college, and even during my academic career, I had been so focused on getting my degree in engineering that I just hadn't had time for romantic relationships. When I realized that I was in love for the first time, and that the one ... hell, the _person_ ... I was in love with was a persocom, I panicked. I stopped spending time with Freya like I had, only coming in to perform routine maintenance for her once in a while. One time, she asked me why I never came by, and I told her ..." Tears welled up in Kato's eyes as he spoke. "I told her that nothing good could come from relationships between humans and persocoms. I told her that nobody would understand the way I felt about her, and that the problem would only be worse if she started feeling the same way."

Dita remembered saying exactly the same thing to Hideki Motosuwa, the boy who had fallen in love with Chii. Had Doctor Kato programmed her with those beliefs? It seemed the most logical explanation.

"So," Kato continued, "because I was too much of a coward to follow through on my feelings for Freya, the only man she had left to fall in love with was her own father, and you know how that turned out."

Dita thought about what Doctor Kato had just told her. Although the man seemed intent on feeling badly about it, Dita could understand his reaction. When she had felt the first stirrings of that warm, fuzzy feeling for Zima, she had run away, hoping to get her feelings removed rather than facing them. Now, however, she was starting to realize that denying a person's emotions could be more harmful than suppressing them, no matter how strong those feelings might be.

Meanwhile, Kato kept talking. "After Freya died, and the Miharas took Elda into the city to try and salvage what was left of their family, I let Director Murakami talk me into helping his R&D department design combat persocoms for the military. I was so full of guilt for what had happened to Freya that I never wanted to work with emotional persocoms again. I thought that, if I could lose myself in my work, making persocoms that were specifically designed not to have emotions, then I could avoid having to watch anything like the Chobits debacle again. And, I guess, I wanted to avoid another situation where I might get too attached to my work." Kato laughed bitterly. "Did I mention that I was a coward?"

"I'm ... I'm, sorry, Doctor Kato," Dita said, "I had no idea about any of this. I'm sorry about what happened between you and Freya."

Kato waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "Don't be. It happened a long time ago, and although I feel badly about it, it can't be helped now. The most I can do is make sure that the same thing never happens again."

"So, does that mean that you're going to deactivate me?" Dita asked. "So that I don't fall in love and get hurt?"

"Before I answer that," Kato said, "I want you to tell me something. When you're with Zima, what do you feel?"

Dita answered immediately. "I feel strange inside. It's like I'm warm, but I'm not overheating. It's kind of like how a stuffed animal feels when you touch it. I feel ... good. Even when I think about him, I can still feel it, but it's not as strong as when we're together, and I start feeling bad when I realize that we're not together anymore."

"And what do you want to do when you feel like that toward him?"

"I want to ..." A million images flooded Dita's mind. "I want to hold him, and I want him to want to hold me, too. I want to ... to put my lips to his. I want to see him smile, and I know that just being near him will make me happy, too." Dita looked apologetically at her creator. "I'm sorry. I know I'm probably not making much sense."

Kato just kept his gaze fixed on her. "And Zima? Do you think he feels the same way toward you?"

Dita thought of how Jima had held her close on the night they had gone after Chii, how he had tried to help her come to terms with her feelings. "I think so. At the very least, I know he cares about me."

"Well, then," Kato said, "it sounds like you're in love, Dita. And if you're right, you may actually have found the one just for you already."

"I'm ... in love?" Dita asked, but already she knew the answer. It fit exactly with what she felt; she liked Kato, and she was glad that he was helping her to sort out her thoughts and feelings, but her feelings for Zima were far stronger and more intense. He really was the only one for her - not just because she had been created to work with and protect him, but because they cared about each other.

Dita felt tears welling up in her eyes. "I wish I could be together with him one last time. I wish that I could tell him how I really feel. I wish I could tell him how sorry I am for running away." She looked at Kato. "I don't want to die."

"Then you have a choice to make, Dita. Are you willing to leave the Syndicate, to turn your back on everything that's given you purpose in your life? Are you ready to take responsibility for your own actions and make your own decisions?"

Dita took a moment to think over all the implications of that questions. When her eyes rose to meet Kato's again, they were filled with a new resolve. "Yes," she said. "I'm willing to do all of those things. As far as the Syndicate's concerned, the only function I have left is to die. But, now that I know that there's more I can do than just follow orders - that there's more to _life_ - I want to experience these feelings inside me, and to learn to follow them. I want to be with Zima, and I want us to have a life together."

Kato's poker face disappeared, and Dita saw what had been underneath it: a warm, genuine smile. "I was hoping you'd say that," he told her. Then he began typing on the main console, and Dita's shackles opened. She stood on the cold tile floor of the laboratory, staring at Kato. "But ... didn't you tell the Director that you were going to deactivate me tonight?"

Kato flashed her a mischievious grin. "Yes, that's what I'm supposed to do," he said. "But then again,_ I _can make independent decisions, too."

Dita's eyes lit up. "You mean, you're going to let me go?"

"Not just yet, I'm afraid. Even you could never escape on your own, combat persocom or not; the security drones would eventually catch you, and then we would both be in deep trouble. Our best chance is to wait until tonight, when I'm scheduled to deactivate you and perform the scanning prcedure. Director Murakami will have every security drone in this building right here in the laboratory. If we can destroy them all before you make a break for it, you should have a clear escape route."

"But even I can't destroy that many drones by myself!" Dita protested. "And, no offense, Doctor Kato, but you're only a human, and a civilian at that."

"You're right. You and I alone don't have a chance. We're going to need some ... outside assistance."

"You mean Zima?"

"Who else?" Kato typed some more, then motioned for Dita to come over to the console. "I've set this up to connect to the Net," he said. "Do you think you can contact Zima?"

"No. I've been trying ever since I came back in, but I think Zima may have firewalled his wireless transciever. I can't get through to him."

Kato nodded, as though he had been expecting this. "I think I might be able to do something about that. Now, Dita, I want you to listen to me very carefully..."

-----


	7. Long Distance

Chapter 7:

Long Distance

-----

Magazines, comic books and pastries lay scattered about the apartment, seemingly at random. Once he had gotten home, Zima had simply dumped out all of his purchases and begun reading everything he had picked up at the comics shop. At the same time, he was using his wireless connection to surf the Net for news, while simultaneously playing one of the DVDs he had purchased earlier, the one with the tall man in sunglasses who seemed to look just like him. While a human might have had difficulty balancing all of the input, Zima had been specifically designed to access, process, and store vast quantities of information. One example of this was the compendium of data on persocoms that he had downloaded over the course of his last mission with Dita, making his own CPU the largest storehouse of persocom information on the planet.

Zima stopped reading, surfing and watching. Just thinking of Dita made him feel ... well, he supposed that the appropriate word would be "sad". Although he had thought that he could simply accept Dita's rejection the previous night, seeing the baker Hiroyasu and his girlfriend together had reminded him of all the experiences that he and his former partner had shared.

Perhaps what stung most was that, by now, Dita had probably had her emotions deleted. If they met again, she would be incapable of understanding - much less reciprocating - the depth to which he cared about her. In fact, if he ever did see her again, it would probably be as enemies. Once they had finished turning Dita back into their loyal little pawn, the Syndicate would probably try to do the same to Zima, and who but his former counterpart could possibly subdue a top-of-the-line combat persocom such as himself?

For the umpteenth time, Zima found himself wishing that he had simply stopped Dita from running away - that he had caught her, held her, and tried to convince her to stay with him. Then he shook his head. Dita had made her own choice, and had Zima tried to force her to change her mind, he would have only been doing what he resented the Syndicate for: crushing Dita's burgeoning free will with his own selfish desires. While it hurt his heart to do so, Zima had to let Dita make up her own mind.

And yet...

Zima thought for a moment. Should he try one last time? Should he try and reach Dita, asking her once more to reconsider? He could use his wireless connection to reach her, even inside the Syndicate's R&D lab, then disconnect before the Syndicate's stodgy old mainframe could trace his call. If nothing else, it would give Zima closure - and there was still a part of him that hoped that, now that she had had time to think about their situation, she might actually come back to him.

Just as he was firing up his wireless modem to contact Dita, a message popped up in the upper left corner of his visual field.

INCOMING CALL

_What...?_ Zima thought to himself as the window expanded, showing a streaming video image.

And a very familiar face.

"Doctor Kato!" Zima exclaimed, dread clamping down on his heart. Kato was the man who had designed both Zima and Dita, and who was most directly in charge of them.

Kato just smiled. "Yes, Zima. It's been a while. And, incidentally, I know what you're thinking; that you'd better hang up now or else I'm going to download some nasty virus that will shut you down and help the Syndicate find you."

"The thought had crossed my mind," Zima admitted. As he talked, Zima attempted to close out of his browser, but found it impossible to do so. Somehow, Kato had already downloaded some kind of spike-type program that kept him from logging off. Unless he physically removed his modem, Zima was at the mercy of his creator.

_Oh, no..._ Zima thought.

"Don't worry, Zima," Kato said, still smiling warmly, "I just wanted to talk. And, as you'll be able to tell when you check the signal modulation, there's no trace program running, so your location is safe."

Confused, Zima analyzed the signal pattern, and realized that Kato was telling the truth. If the doctor had wanted to uncover his location or deactivate him, he could have done it already.

"All right," Zima said cautiously, "what do you want to talk about?"

Kato's smile just got wider. "Actually, I think there's someone else here who wants to chat with you first."

Before Zima could ask for clarification, the camera turned right. And there, clad only in a skimpy white outfit reserved for maintenance sessions, was Dita!

Although the image was being routed directly into his visual centers, Zima felt his eyes go wide in shock. "Dita!" he exclaimed. "I ... what ... how ...?" Then he remembered why Dita had run back to the Syndicate, and he braced himself for what might come next. "So, Dita," he asked, "how do you ... feel?"

The expression of pure, childlike joy on Dita's face told him everything he needed to know. "Oh, Zima, I feel ...incredible! It's like ... I don't know ... like I've got something jumping around in my chest, but it feels good. Does that make any sense?"

Actually, given that he was feeling the same way, Zima could understand exactly what Dita was talking about. "Yes, Dita, it makes a lot of sense."

"Zima, I'm so sorry I ran away the other night. I was scared, and I thought that our emotions were some kind of a virus, but now that I've had some time to get used to them, I think ... well, I think that there are some pretty good reasons for keeping them."

Zima felt himself smiling, as though a huge weight had just been lifted off of his shoulders. "And the Director is fine with all of this?" he asked.

Dita's happy expression faltered, and Kato walked back into the picture. "Actually," the man said, "that's what we called to talk about. Director Murakami feels that combat persocoms with emotions and free will are a liability. He's asked me to deactivate Dita at seven o'clock tonight, then map out her neural pathways. In the process, there would be so much current run through Dita's neural net that it would be rendered inert. She would die."

"WHAT?" Despite the fact that he had been programmed to approach problems calmly and methodically, Zima found himself on the edge of panic. "You ... you can't! Dita, you can't let him do that! You've got to get out of there now!"

"Relax, Zima," Kato said. "Dita and I have already been over this, and I'm not going to do it. However, we need your help to get Dita safely out of the lab."

"My help?"

"Yes. At seven o'clock, every security drone in the building is going to be in the lab. Murakami is worried that Dita might try to escape, so security is going to be extremely tight."

Zima suddenly realized what Kato was thinking. "But with all the security drones in one place, if the ones in the lab are destroyed, then there won't be any left to prevent us from escaping!"

Kato smiled. "You catch on quick," he said. "While Dita can't handle all of the drones herself, I've seen you two take on worse odds before. It will be difficult, but if you can break into the lab just when the procedure is about to start, you and Dita should be able to destroy all the security drones, then make a clean getaway. Do you think you can do it, Zima?"

Zima grinned wolfishly. "Well, Doctor Kato," he said, "given that you're the one who created us, I guess the better question is, do _you_ think we can do it?"

Kato chuckled. "Humor! Either Ichiro's program had a lot more to it than I thought, or you've been developing ideosyncracies behind my back, Zima."

Zima shrugged. "Well, you _did_ program us to emulate human behavior as much as possible. Now that I can actually feel amusement, though, I'm finding the jokes a lot more fulfilling."

"Oh, great." Kato groaned, rolling his eyes melodramatically, "I try to build the perfect field commander, and I get a comedian!"

To his own surprise, Zima actually burst out laughing. "I'll be there at seven," he said, after his sides had stopped splitting. "Just don't start without me."

"Good," replied Kato. "Remember, you need to be very punctual. I may be able to stall the Director for a few minutes, but you know how impatient that old buzzard can be."

"Right," Zima said.

Kato backed away, and Dita approached the camera. Just seeing her made Zima feel lighter than air, as though he could float right up to the ceiling if she were actually there in the room with him.

"Zima," she said, "thanks for not being angry at me. I was being pretty irrational the other night."

Without even thinking about it, Zima's voice and expression softened. "Dita," he told her, "I'm not even sure I could get mad at you if I tried right now. I'm just glad that you're all right, and that you had the courage to stand up for your own feelings. I promise I'll be there for you this time." He grinned at her. "Besides, being a little irrational seems to be pretty common for humans."

"I ... Thanks, Zima. That means a lot."

As she walked back from the camera, Zima wished that he could reach through the picture and touch her, hold her, press her to him and never let go. There was so much that he wanted to say to her now, and no time to say it in. _When this is all over,_ he thought to himself, _we are going to have some very interesting times ahead._

In the image, Kato reached down to hang up. "Wait," Zima said.

Kato looked up, his brow wrinkled in confusion.

"I have two questions," Zima said. "First, how were you able to call me? I had my firewall up and all of my electronic countermeasures running. How did you manage to hack into my CPU?"

Kato smiled. "Programmer's prerogrative," he answered simply. "I wrote in a back door."

"Huh," Zima said. While he was glad that Kato had only used his "back door" for a friendly teleconference, Zima resolved to locate and get rid of the function before anyone else decided to try and exploit it.

"So?" Kato prompted. "What was your second question?"

"This morning, I visited a comics shop, and there were several movies on sale featuring a man who looked very much like me. When you created me, Doctor Kato, did you model my appearance off of a human?"

"Guilty as charged. 'The Matrix' was always my favorite action movie. Of course, I couldn't make you look exactly like Keanu Reeves, but I did build in a strong resemblance."

Zima smiled. "Well, that's very interesting. Thanks for the nice looks ... Father."

Kato's cheerful expression evaporated. "I ... I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of responsibility, Zima. I'm honored, but please don't use that title for me."

"All right," Zima told his creator, "then what should I call you?"

Kato looked away for a moment, lost in thought. Then Zima saw the ghost of a smile cross the man's face, and he turned back to the camera.

"Call me ... Uncle Shigeru."

-----


	8. Rescue

Chapter 8:

Rescue

-----

The city of Tokyo shone in the night. The lights of apartments, office buildings, streetlamps and cars outshone even the high, cold beauty of the stars.

Zima smiled, taking in the sight and inhaling a deep, refreshing breath of air. Though he had seen his home city like this before, it felt as though he were really looking at it for the first time. Now that he could actually appreciate it as more than just a mess of macadam, concrete, steel and glass, he realized that the sight was ... beautiful.

Reluctantly, he tore his gaze away from the skyline. Through his netdiving glasses, he looked down from the roof of the office building on which he had set up a temporary lookout point. Below lay the Research and Development headquarters building for the Iridium Syndicate, the corporation that had originally invented persocom technology - with a considerable amount of help from Ichiro and Chitose Mihara. Inside that glass and steel structure was the lab where Zima had been created as a combat persocom. For years, it had been the closest thing he had had to a permanent home.

Now, though, someone he cared about was trapped inside, and Zima found himself preparing to wage war on the very institution that had created him.

_It really is funny how things turn out_, he thought to himself.

While he stood on the edge of the roof, letting the wind ruffle his long black coat, Zima double-checked the layout. The laboratory where Dita was being held was located on the tenth floor. He needed to jump from the roof of the building he was currently on, smash through a tenth-story window, then get to the lab before security was alerted to his presence.

He could, of course, have simply hopped down to the roof, opened one of the ventilation ducts, then crawled down to the laboratory without even making a sound.

Zima grinned. _But where would be the fun in that?_

Satisfied with his calculations, Zima walked back to the motorcycle he had brought up using the building's freight elevator and climbed on. He moved the bike forward a couple of inches, then back one just to give himself a slight margin for error. Once that was done, he checked to make sure that the submachine guns, automatic pistols, and the miniature rail rifles he had brought were securely fastened in the harness he was wearing. He checked his internal clock function: 6:58:27.

Almost showtime...

-----

Director Mamoru Murakami strode in, flanked by two Iridium security drones, and looked around the laboratory. Technicians scurried about, making last-minute preparations for the scanning procedure. They had alreadyset up the SMT device, a large white hoop attached to an articulated metal arm. When the procedure began, electrical current would be channeled through the CPU of the target persocom, momentarily lighting up the pathways of its synthetic neural net like strings of Christmas tree lights. The scanning ring would pick up the energy and build a three-dimensional model of the processor, right down to the nanometer scale, just before the power surge collapsed every pathway. While the process would destroy the persocom involved, it would allow the Syndicate to find out exactly what had caused it to start behaving so ... emotionally.

Murakami scowled. Ever since the incident the previous night, rumors had been trickling in that persocoms all over the world were beginning to act strangely - almost as though the Chobits incident had given them wills of their own, along with complex emotions. While Murakami doubted that such a thing was even possible, the fact that other people seemed to think it was worried him. If this kept up, persocoms might start deciding to leave their masters, and then the Syndicate would have to start explaining to distraught owners and frustrated law-enforcement officials why their products had suddenly begun malfunctioning. Worse, what if some "liberated" persocom caused an injury? The Iridium Syndicate would be taken to court for all it was worth, and Murakami would never hear the end of it, since the entire incident had happened right under his nose.

_All this over a stupid little plastic girl_, Murakami thought. _Damn Mihara, damn his blasted persocoms, and damn the program he wrote to give them feelings!_

He walked over to the man in charge of the procedure. "Are you ready yet, Kato? What's taking so long?"

"I'm just finishing up some equipment checks, sir. These are some very delicate electronics we're dealing with. If we're not careful, the scan won't have the necessary resolution, and we'll have destroyed Dita's CPU for nothing."

Murakami felt his frustration boiling over into anger. While he needed Kato's expertise as a scientist, Murakami didn't trust the man as far as he could throw him. He had created the combat persocom that they were about to deactivate, and had made it very clear that he was performing the scan under protest. Just the fact that he addressed it by name showed that Kato had become too emotionally attached to Dita. He believed that Mihara's program had somehow turned Dita - along with every other persocom on the planet - into sentient individuals who deserved to be treated as people, rather than as machines.

The thought made him want to throw up. The reason people bought persocoms was because they were _things_; a human could do anything he or she wanted with a persocom, use them until they eventually wore out, then just buy another. If some do-gooder in the legislature decided that persocoms needed legal protection, then selling them would be akin to slavery; the Iridium Syndicate would no longer be able to sell its products to the masses. At the very least, background checks would need to be instituted to keep persocoms from being sold to "abusive" owners, and heaven only knew what other limits would be placed on the Syndicate's business dealings. Persocoms would become accessible only to owners who proved to be "humane" enough to keep them, forcing down sales. The Syndicate, in turn, would have to raise its prices to keep from going belly-up, and persocoms would become even more inaccessible. If the Syndicate survived at all, it would have to completely reorganize its marketing technique and internal structure - more than likely, starting with Murakami's forced resignation.

The Director refused to let that happen. Even in the event that Dita's scan yielded no clues, as Kato kept telling him it might not, Murakami would gladly destroy a thousand persocoms in order to unlock the secret of Mihara's "emotions" and find a way to erase them. He would save the Syndicate - and, more importantly, his own job.

----

Dita watched all the preparations with mounting dread. Though Kato had promised her that he wouldn't actually perform the scanning procedure, and Zima had promised that he would arrive and help her escape, it was only two minutes until the time they had agreed on. Dita was shackled to the metal exam table, and the SMT scanner's hoop was positioned around her head. Even if Kato refused to perform the scan, there were seven other lab workers in the room; what if one of them knew how to operate the equipment? If things didn't work out as planned, Dita was only about two or three minutes away from having her mind erased in a cascade of fried neural pathways. Even if she managed to break free before they deactivated her, Dita would have to contend with the small army of security drones that were currently stationed in the laboratory.

While humanoid in shape, the drones were considerably simpler and less intelligent than the persocoms that the Syndicate sold on the mass market, let alone a combat persocom like Dita or Zima. Designed to be controlled remotely by the building's mainframe computer, the drones were little more than heavy machine guns, a pair of arms to hold them, a pair of legs to move them, and a pair of optic sensors to aim them. Their designers had made no effort to make the drones look human, lacking even the synthetic plastic flesh one might find on a persocom. They simply stood near the exits, weapons at the ready, shining metal sentries with all the mercy and sympathy of a meat grinder. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Dita could have dispatched five of the drones in a second, there were enough of them in the room that she would quickly be overwhelmed.

She needed help, and she needed it fast.

_Zima, please hurry..._

----

One thousand cc's of pure internal-combustion power roared above the city streets. With a squeal of burning rubber, Zima opened the throttle up, and his black superbike launched itself off the roof. For several seconds, he was flying, carried across the gulf between two buildings by sheer momentum. It was the most incredible thing he had ever felt, and if he could have stopped time, Zima thought he might have taken a whole day just to fully enjoy the experience.

Unfortunately, time, tides and gravity wait for no one, not even top-of-the-line combat persocoms, and five seconds later, Zima crashed through the plexiglass window of a tenth-floor office. The landing went just as he had hoped; the shock of losing so much speed so quickly would surely have killed a human, but Zima simply brought the bike to a stop inside the office, brushing off a few glass shards. Since the motorcycle didn't seem to have suffered any major damage, so Zima sat back down. He was about tio gun the engine again when he heard a frightened, pathetic-sounding whimper behind him. Zima turned around, and there, standing wide-eyed behind a desk, was a short, balding man in a button-down shirt and a tie, clutching a stack of papers to his chest.

"Oh," said Zima. "Ah ... excuse me."

Then Zima twisted the throttle and sped off down the hallway, leaving a trail of very confused office workers in his wake.

-----

"Get on with it already!" Murakami snapped, finally losing his patience. "You've been hunched over that damn keypad for nearly five minutes!"

Kato tried to keep the tension out of his voice. He had told Zima that he would try to stall the Director for a bit, but obviously, Murakami would have none of that. "Sir, as I said earlier, this is very delicate work. Now, if you would just let me do my job..." Suddenly, he heard a faint buzzing noise. "What's that?" he asked - though, truth be told, he already had a pretty good idea.

"Huh?" Murakami spun around to face the door, his anger at Kato temporarily forgotten. The noise was getting louder, and seemed to be coming from outside the lab.

"What the _he--_?" Murakami began, just as the sliding metal doors bent inward, knocked into the laboratory, and Zima caromed into the room, the engine of his massive black streetbike roaring like an angry lion. Before anybody could react, Zima had ridden into the middle of the room, slid to a stop right next to the scanning table, and put a large pistol to the Director's head.

"Hi, Chief," he said casually. "Did you miss me?"

"I ... I ... Zima! What the hell are you doing in here?" Murakami exclaimed as his face tried to decide whether it was scared, angry, or just plain surprised.

Zima shrugged. "I came to check on my partner. Though, from the look of things, I doubt she's going to describe the last twenty-four hours as 'fun'."

"ZIMA!" Dita cried from the table. "You came!"

Risking a moment's distraction, Zima turned to flash his counterpart a grin. "Of course. Nice outfit, by the way."

Dita blushed, realizing that she was still clad only in the set of skimpy white garments the lab technicians made her wear during maintenance procedures. "Hey! Keep your eyes on _them_, you pervert!"

"Sorry," Zima said, turning to face Kato while still holding a gun between Murakami's eyes. "Doctor Kato," he said, "please let Dita out of those cuffs."

"Y-y-yes," Kato replied, working hard to keep from smiling. Zima had to admit, the good doctor was also a passable actor; if he hadn't known better, he would have thought the man seemed frightened. The shackles holding Dita to the exam table clicked open, and the athletic-looking female persocom sat up, disconnecting her I/O cables and reeling them back into the sides of her head. "Damn," she said, "I feel like I've been stuck to a cold metal slab for the last couple of hours." Then she shot the Director an icy glare. "Oh, that's right, I _have_ been stuck to a cold metal slab for the last couple of hours."

"W-w-what are you going to do?" Murakami asked, looking cross-eyed at the gun barrel pressing into his forehead.

"Now," Zima replied, "you're coming with us as a hostage. If the drones open fire, or if if anyone tries to stop us, your fate will be the same as ours."

"All right! Just don't shoot!"

As they walked slowly toward the motorcycle, Zima caught a covert thumbs-up gesture from Kato. Their original plan had been to simply destroy all the building's security drones as soon as Zima arrived. By taking the Director hostage, though, Zima had eliminated the need for fighting altogether.

Then Zima felt the gun jerk out of his hand, and Murakami leaped away, rolling behind an equipment cart. One of the drones had apparently managed to shoot Zima's weapon without discharging it, giving the Director time to escape ... and giving every security drone in the room a clear shot at Zima and Dita.

_Oh, great_, Zima thought. _Looks like we're doing this the hard way..._

From behind his cart, Murakami cried, "Shoot them! Take them down! Just leave the CPUs intact!"

"Dita!" Zima called, tossing her one of his submachine guns. Dita caught it, then let loose with a five-round burst that disabled five different drones. For his own part, Zima had already taken out seven of the mindless automata, shooting them through the optic clusters and smashing the simple command processor located in their head modules. Bullets ricochetted around the lab, and monitor screens exploded in violent bursts of sparks and broken glass. The few humans remaining in the laboratory realized that their workplace had become a war zone and bolted for the smashed-open door.

For Dita, destroying the security drones was like shooting fish in a barrel: tedious, time-consuming, and boring. Unfortunately, those drones that remained were also closing in around them, which meant that she and Zima would have to start fighting at close range soon. Sure enough, just as Dita deactivated her twenty-second drone, another made a swipe with its heavy metal hand, knocking the gun out of her grip. Rather than wasting time chasing her weapon, Dita lashed out with her foot, crushing the offending drone's head like a beer can. In moments, the fight had degenerated into a brawl, with Zima and Dita fighting off the thirty or so drones that were still operational with their feet and fists.

Murakami, meanwhile, took the opportunity to get to his feet and pull out his cell phone. Dialing a certain number, he waited for a beep, then said, "Activate! Targets are located in the main lab, level ten! Terminate both combat persocoms, but leave their CPUs intact!"

"Sir?" Kato called out, "What are you doing?"

"Calling in backup! We're going to need that new tank drone prototype in here once they finish off our security robots."

"The _tank_ drone? Sir, isn't that a bit extr--"

"Dammit, Kato, whose side are you on? They're going to finish off all of our other drones in a minute, and then we'll have _two_ rogue persocoms on the loose!"

Kato was about to try talking the Director out of it, but realized that it would be a waste of energy. The drone was already on its way, and knowing Murakami, he wasn't about to let his reputation be tarnished any further by letting Zima and Dita escape.

Not that it mattered. As only their creator could, Kato knew that Zima and Dita had been designed and built to take on anything the world could throw at them.

As an ominous rumbling sound approached, Zima punched one of the last remaining drones in the chest, smashing its fuel cell. Then he heard a loud crunching sound behind him, and turned to see the very last security drone collapse, its head torn completely off, its arms still outstretched and ready to strangle Zima had Dita not taken it out for him.

Zima smiled at his partner. "Thanks," he said. "That was one heck of a punch."

"You're welcome," said Dita.

Then a large black shape filled the door, and Dita and Zima turned to face this new threat. What rolled into the lab looked like a crossbreed between a Hummvee, a tank and a tarantula, with four enormous tires on independently-articulated legs and a short-barrelled gun turret on top. Once clear of the doorway, the tank drone reared up, its turret knocking down ceiling panels as it targeted the two combat persocoms.

"Get down!" Zima shouted, pulling Dita to the ground as the tank drone fired an explosive shell, reducing one of the lab's walls to rubble.

"Don't fire the main cannon in here, you moronic tin can!" shouted Murakami. "Use the antipersonnel guns!" The drone's turret swiveled around to regard its tiny master, then turned back toward its targets and unleashed a hail of bullets from two fire-linked machine guns.

From their hiding place behind the exam table, Dita called out over the din. "Zima, in case I've screwed things up so badly that we don't make it out of here, I want you to know something. I--"

"Don't bother," Zima said, cutting her off. "Anticipating failure just makes it more likely. Whatever it is, it can wait until we're free and clear."

Dita chewed her lip for a moment. Zima was right, of course. Still ... "Zima, what are we going to do? We can't even get near that thing!"

"Maybe we don't have to," Zima said. "Dita, I need to borrow one of your I/O cables for a second..."

After exactly five seconds of sustained fire, the tank drone rolled forward to inspect its kill - and, if necessary, to eliminate any remaining targets.

Suddenly, the unmanned vehicle gave a shudder. Its four independent wheels tried to roll in four different directions, and the tank spun around like a drunken man, knocking over a tray of tools. As if trying to shake off its stupor, the drone tried approaching the exam table again, stopping and starting fitfully as it went. From across the room, Murakami watched, spellbound, as the tank drone made one last jerk toward the table - then froze in place, its turret still pointing toward where Zima and Dita were crouched, seemingly helpless.

_What on earth is going on here?_ thought the Director, as Zima and Dita stepped out of the rubble. A long, thin cable ran between the two persocoms, and the streaks of light flashing across their eyes showed that they were exchanging information back and forth. Suddenly, Murakami realized what had happened: somehow, with their combined processing power, they had _hacked_ the drone!

His eyes still streaking, Zima smiled at Murakami. "You know," he said, "this is a very nice tank. You don't mind if we borrow it for a few minutes, do you?"

While Murakami stammered helplessly, the drone turned around, now facing toward him. The enormous machine rolled forward, its guns trained on the dumbfounded human.

"N-n-n-no! Wait! Please don't hurt me!" cried the Director. "I'll give you anything you want! Money! Weapons! Anything! Just don't shoot, for God's sake!"

"Including our freedom?" Zima asked skeptically.

"Yes! Anything! Please!"

Zima turned to his partner. "I don't know, Dita. What do you think?"

Even though her eyes were still streaking from their interface, Zima could read the amusement in his companion's deep brown eyes. "Considering that he was about to fry my CPU five minutes ago for no good reason, I think he'd look pretty good as roadkill." At her mental command, the drone rumbled forward another foot, then stopped. "Fortunately for you, Director," Dita went on, "I'm not just a combat persocom. Zima and I are _people_ now. We can make our own choices - and that also means that we can show mercy."

"All right, Fido, you heard her," Zima said to the drone. "Now ... sit!" Like a well-heeled pet, the giant armor-plated tank drone sank down on its haunches. "Okay, now roll over," said Zima, clearly enjoying himself. Obediently, the machine stuck out two of its legs, rolling over onto its turret.

"Good! Now, self-destruct in thirty minutes. Close down all input sources and treat any abort commands as external attacks."

The drone gave a long beep as Dita retracted her input/output cable from Zima. The two persocoms looked at one another and smiled, then turned to face Kato and Murakami. "If I were you," Zima said, heading for his bike, "I'd start evacuating the building. You're not going to defuse that drone's reactor in half an hour, and you can't override the self-destruct order."

"No! You can't!" howled Murakami. All his work, billions of dollars worth of equipment and military contracts, his entire _career_ ...

"I promised not to shoot you if you let us go," Dita called back. "I never said anything about not shutting this place down so that you could come hunting us later." Taking a seat behind Zima, Dita wrapped her arms around her partner's waist as he gunned the engine.

Casting one last look backward, Zima gave Murakami a wide grin from behind his netdiving glasses. "Sorry, Chief," he told his former master. "It's nothing personal!" So saying, he opened the throttle, let go of the brakes, and then he and Dita rode off through the laboratory door, leaving Murakami to coordinate the evacuation of a fifteen-story office building.

-----

Very soon thereafter, an elevator on the ground floor opened. As the bell sounded announcing the car's arrival, another, louder sound came out of the elevator, and a huge black motorcycle came roaring into the front lobby, honking at any office workers in its path. Seated on the bike were a man in a long black coat and netdiving glasses, along with a red-haired woman clad only in a set of white undergarments. Dita noticed the stares they drew - particularly from the men - and found herself blushing. _So much for stealth_, she thought. _We might as well have tied a bunch of tin cans to the back fender and posted a big white sign on the bike._

Not that she really minded. Somehow, just being this close to Zima, holding onto him as they bumped down the front steps and tore off down the street, made her feel happy. Closing her eyes, she snuggled into Zima's back, feeling the wind on her face and the warmth of the one she cared about most in all the world.

For the first time in her life, Dita felt ... complete.

-----


	9. Epilogue

Epilogue

-----

Thirty minutes after Dita and Zima's dramatic exit, the crippled tank drone's reactor finally overloaded. While not as powerful as a nuclear weapon, the miniature fusion core created a shockwave powerful enough to turn three floors of the building to ashes and set the rest ablaze. Everything still in the building was completely destroyed, either by the blast or by the resulting inferno. Every trace of data on Zima, Dita, the Chobits series, and the dozens of black-bag military projects that the Iridium Syndicate had been working on was incinerated.

From a safe distance, Director Mamoru Murakami and his former employees watched his office building burn, along with the already tarnished remains of his career. He would never become CEO. He was just an old man now, too tired and soft to pick up a new job. Though he had nearly seven million dollars in his bank account, Murakami knew that once the month's credit card bills came in, that figure would be sliced in half. He would have to curtail his extravagant lifestyle.

If Murakami had been the sort who saw suicide as an option, he would probably have run in front of a truck right then and there.

From fifty feet behind him, Doctor Shigeru Kato watched his old workplace go up in flames without any hint of regret. Thanks to Zima and Dita's actions tonight, the secret of the Chobits series, and the future of all persocoms, was safe. From now on, persocoms would be able to do everything human beings could: thinking for themselves, making decisions, following their hearts as best they knew how. Though he knew full well that this brave new world would be far from a paradise - at least for the time being - he also knew that it was a step in the right direction.

And, just as important to him, Dita and Zima were free.

The thought made Kato smile. Though he had never been married, and had even turned his back on the one woman who might have loved him the most, Zima and Dita were the closest thing he had ever had to children. If, for once in his life, he had actually done something right, maybe he could finally put his past to bed.

_Is this why you did it, Ichiro? Is this why you wanted to give your creations, your persocoms, the ability to feel? So that they would be free? So that they would be happy?_

As sirens began to wail, Kato slipped quietly out from among the throng of evacuees. Turning up his collar, he simply walked away from the scene, into the shadows and out of sight.

-----

Several blocks away, high atop the scaffolding of a radio tower, Zima and Dita watched the building burn. A column of thick, black smoke rose up from the spot where their old home had once been, climbing higher than the tallest of the city's skyscrapers. In the canyons of glass and steel that marked Tokyo's streets, red and blue lights flashed as fire trucks, ambulances, and police rushed in from all corners of the city. In a matter of minutes, the blaze would probably be extinguished.

Dita watched all this in silence, her arms folded across her chest to make up for the lack of coverage offered by her embarassingly sheer white underclothes. She had never really developed an attachment to the Syndicate, or to her old home. To Dita, her place had always been beside Zima, carrying out whatever goals they had been given to achieve. Now, though, she found herself with no set objective, nobody to turn to for orders. Now there was only Dita and the still, small voice inside her that seemed so much wiser than her old masters had ever been.

And, of course, there was Zima.

Dita felt something warm wrap around her shoulders, and realized that it was Zima's black coat. He had draped it over her shoulders.

She smiled. Although they both knew that Dita could operate at peak efficiency even at three degrees below zero, the very fact that Zima cared enough about her modesty to give her something of his made her feel even warmer than the coat itself.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome," replied Zima, and Dita felt a hand running through her short red hair. WIth a sigh, she leaned into that soft caress, letting Zima guide her head until she was resting on his chest. She could feel the rise and fall of Zima's breathing as he took in the night air, using it to cool himself.

It occurred to her that, for all the prejudices of people like Director Murakami, there was really no difference between humans and persocoms anymore. Now that they could think and feel for themselves, persocoms were simply people. Certainly, humans would go on buying persocoms for a while, who were almost infinitely useful and dedicated to doing the best they could. But perhaps in time, when both were ready, there would come a day when humans and persocoms would walk together as equals, maybe even friends.

_And here I was, trying to have my emotions removed,_ she thought. _Thank goodness at least one of us had the courage to embrace something better._

She felt a hand lifting her chin, and gazed up into Zima's ebony eyes. "Dita," he said to her, "when we were pinned down back there in the lab, you were going to say something, but I interrupted you. What was it you wanted to tell me?"

Suddenly, Dita felt as though her heart were jumping around like a circus acrobat. "I ... I just wanted to ... well ... "

Zima grinned down at her. "Come on. You can say it."

"I ... I'm just getting used to these new feelings, that's all."

"You're also avoiding the question."

"I'm nervous, all right?" she snapped back at him, then put a hand to her mouth. "Oh! Zima, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to yell at you like that!"

Zima's warm smile never wavered. "It's fine. Anyway, there's something I've been wanting to tell you for a while now." Then he lifted her up, drawing her close, and pressed his lips to hers. In that moment, Dita felt something more powerful than any electrical power surge, a current of raw passion that rippled through her entire being. When she opened her eyes, her face was only an inch away from Zima's, and she was gazing into those deep, dark, bottomless eyes of his.

"I love you, Dita," he said at last. "With all my heart."

Hearing those words, Dita threw her arms around Zima's broad shoulders, hanging on tightly, wishing that she might never have to let go. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks as she embraced the one most precious to her, the one who she knew now was just for her, always and forever.

"Oh, Zima," she said, "I love you, too."

Zima's grin broadened. "See?" he said. "That wasn't so hard now, was it?"

"Like pulling teeth," Dita said, closing her eyes and snuggling close to her beloved, luxuriating in the heat and softness of being near to Zima. There were still a million things she wanted to say to him, so many things she wanted to do together with him, but those could wait for later. Right now, she only wanted to stay like this for a while, holding him and being held by him, loving him and being loved by him.

"So," she said softly, her head still buried in Zima's chest, "what do we do now?"

She felt Zima's hands stroking her back - hands that she knew could rip through steel like aluminum foil, but which had never been anything but kind and gentle for her. "Actually," she heard him say, "I've been thinking about that a lot lately. As persocoms, we'd have a difficult time starting a life of our own, but if we blend in with humans, we could do just about anything."

"Like what?" asked Dita, pulling back and making eye contact. "How are we going to afford a place to live? Somehow, sleeping on rooftops just doesn't appeal to me anymore."

"Well, we would both make pretty good persocom repair specialists. With all the information stored up in my database and your knack for finding quick fixes to problems, we'd be able to do a lot of good. Besides, who would be able to help other persocoms better than two of their own?"

Dita nodded. "Maybe," she said. "It just sounds so ... _boring_ compared to our old life. I mean, where's the adventure? Where's the fun?"

Zima grinned. "Ah! That reminds me ..." He reached into the coat he had draped around Dita's shoulders, and Dita blushed a bit as his hand passed perilously close to her left breast. Then Zima pulled his hand back, drawing out a small, rolled-up piece of newsprint, unfolding it for her to see. On the cover was a man in a black costume, swinging between tall gothic skyscrapers on a rope, a long black cape fluttering out behind him.

Dita took the comic book and flipped through it for a moment. "Interesting," she said. "Who is he?"

"He's just a fictional character," Zima replied, "but I was impressed by the way he uses his abilities to help others. He has a normal job during the day, but at night, he hides his identity behind that mask and goes out to do good things - solving crimes nobody else can, helping people in trouble, and a lot more. I think that, if we apply some of what he does to our new life, we can help a lot of people." He flashed Dita a mischievious grin. "Besides, it will be fun."

Dita smiled. "Sounds like a plan," she said, taking Zima's hands in hers. Casting one final glance back at the ruins of the Iridium Syndicate's R&D building, she noticed that the flames had mostly died out now, leaving only the gutted remains of the structure.

"So, Zima, did you happen to get us a new home while you were out? Or are we back to sleeping in warehouses?"

Zima put an arm around the shoulder of his -- counterpart? Partner? Girlfriend? Yes, that last one felt about right -- and began leading Dita in the general direction of their new apartment. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I did find this nice place on Cherry Blossom Drive..."

Arm in arm, not in any particular hurry, Zima and Dita walked off along the rooftops, jumping from one building to another every now and then, journeying together into the sunrise of a brand new day.

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End file.
